Maintaining a reputation for serving local produce, meats, seafood and poultry throughout the winter months isn’t easy, but after 14 years, Jim Weaver has it down to a science.

Although it’s March, and New Jersey’s spring crops are still weeks away, the menu at Weaver’s restaurant, Tre Piani in Plainsboro’s Forrestal Village, still has its share of local products.

The tomato sauce is made with Jersey tomatoes, harvested and canned in the Garden State at the height of the season. Salt oysters come from Cape May, much of the other seafood served is whatever is being caught off the Jersey Shore, and salads are made with greens grown in local greenhouses.

But that’s to be expected of the author of the recently published “Locavore Adventures: One Chef’s Slow Food Journey” (Rivergate Books), the story of Weaver’s personal journey in search of sustainable, locally grown foods.

“Local products are around,” Weaver says, “you just have to know where to look.” This time of year he also used local cheeses, eggs, honey, apples and potatoes.

Weaver has been owner and executive chef of Tre Piani since 1998, building the restaurant’s reputation and his own as a supporter of local farms and businesses. During the week it’s a favorite lunchtime dining spot for business people, while evenings and Saturdays it draws families and couples.

We visited during the week, when many patrons took advantage of the prematurely warm weather to dine outside on the patio. We chose seats inside the comfortable first-floor bistro.

The soup of the day was beef vegetable barley, $7, a warming combination with a surprisingly light, flavorful broth perfect for an exceptionally warm March night. Chunks of beef, vegetables and grains of barley completed the soup.

A grilled chicken gyro salad, $14, was large enough to serve as a lunch entrée or light supper with crunchy local lettuce, crumbled feta cheese, tomato and red onion tossed in the house tzatziki sauce. A warm pita perched inside the bowl helped to add to the Mediterranean flavor, but missing were the kalamata olives listed on the menu, which would have raised the dish a notch.

Weaver’s menu is filled with dishes he can sustain year round using local products, while his list of specials features New Jersey’s many seasonal fruits and vegetables. When we visited we tried one of the evening’s specials, pesce al cartoccio, $29, a complete seafood meal in a parchment paper pouch.

When the cartoccio arrived, the maître d’ opened the pouch to reveal the steaming filet of New Jersey flounder, cooked to perfection inside its wrapper. Also inside the pouch were sweet, flavorful Manila clams, which opened inside during the cooking process.

New potatoes, carrots and other vegetables completed the delightful dish, which gave a whole new meaning to the term “packaged” food.

Pasta is dominant on the menu, and customers can order half or full portions. A half-portion of tortellini alla Bolognese, $10.50 half and $19 whole, was plenty for my appetite, with more than two dozen cheese-filled tortellini topped with the light housemade meat sauce.

We shared the restaurant’s premier dessert, hot chocolate, $12.50. It requires 10 minutes to make, but you get a lava surge of melted chocolate when you cut into the filo dough wrapper that surrounds this variation on molten chocolate cake. With an extra scoop of vanilla gelato it was rich, delightful and enough to share.

For those in search of a vegetarian option, a vegetable cassoulet with white beans and spinach is available.

Weaver says for vegans he can eliminate the buttery pastry topping.

This time of year Weaver is gearing up for the spring harvest in New Jersey, preparing menu items that will take advantage of the arrival of asparagus, strawberries and peas, and keeping an eye on what the fishermen are catching off the Jersey coast.
It’s all standard operating procedure for one of the state’s top locavore chefs.